Stacy Keach

Stacy Keach has died at the age of 85. When I was younger and saw him on sitcoms like Titus, I thought of him as sort of a Robert Goulet type, a character actor with the stereotypical announcer voice who often cameoed as dandyish authority figures. Imagine my surprise years later when I saw Fat City, John Huston's raw and dirty movie about boxing in a corrupt little town starring Stacy Keach. He parlayed his physical size and vigorous reflexes into a role that conveyed a real sense of dangerous desperation.

Then, ten years later, he starred in one of the greatest pulp road movies of all time, 1981's Road Games, in which he put his reflexes and intense features to work in a great action movie.

In any movie, Keach brought so much energy, at times he risked overpowering everything else, but I'm always happy when he turns up. Few actors so electrify a screen. In 1984, he started playing Mickey Spillane's detective character, Mike Hammer, in a television series, a role Keach because associated with ever after, coming back to it for audiobooks and a revival series. On stage, he frequently appeared in Shakespeare productions. He played Falstaff multiple times, starting in the 1960s. I sure would love to have seen that.

Here's a clip of him as Falstaff from a 2014 production of Henry IV part 2 in which he sings a song with lyrics loosely based on Shakespeare's original lines. I sure like the costumes in this production but I am a sucker for those rare productions that set Shakespeare plays in the time and place Shakespeare intended. Of course, I'd prefer they'd have stuck to Shakespeare's lines . . .